


Disruptive Behavior

by katiemariie



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Ableism, Age Difference, Canon Disabled Character, Casual Sex, M/M, Medical Trauma, Past Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 19:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12195786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katiemariie/pseuds/katiemariie
Summary: Disillusioned with the 24th century and nostalgic for the 23rd, Alexander is drawn toward the present when a strange human comes to his hotel room.





	Disruptive Behavior

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SweetPollyOliver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPollyOliver/gifts).



So far, Alexander is none too fond of the 24th century. His friends are all dying. There are too many wars. The whole ethos of radical diversity and acceptance that drew him to the Federation in the first place has fallen away, replaced by something frighteningly familiar yet altogether foreign. Something old. Something new.

For some time, Alexander assumes that his antipathy toward the changing times is entirely normal—an expected outcome of readjusting to a society that refuses the stasis of Platonius. 

After reorienting himself to 23rd century Federation society, it’s understandable that he would have some difficulty letting go of that remarkable time and place and all the work he put into finding himself there.

He’s seen his human friends go through something similar, listened to Dr. McCoy’s complaints about the kids taking over Starfleet, commiserated with Uhura over the diminishing of the communications division.

Alexander chalks up his growing frustration with the present day to growing older—if not in body, then in spirit.

The problem, as he is still so often wont to assume, is with him, not society.

Who knows how long Alexander would have remained content in this self-delusion if he weren’t forced to switch doctors.

He’s been able to hold off on picking a new doctor for longer than he thought he could get away with. Either due to negligence or professional courtesy, the diplomatic corps allows Alexander to receive his pre- and post-assignment check-ups with Dr. McCoy long after the man stopped seeing other patients. But eventually they catch up on him, sending several stern reminders to “select a new provider” from the corps’ pre-approved list.

With the flip of an antique coin, Alexander selects one of the two primary care physicians with specialities in “xenobiology, species: other.”

He goes into the appointment expecting more of the same advice he’s received from McCoy over the years: eat more fiber, replace your orthopedic shoes more often, keep up with swimming every day, but for god’s sake, man, don’t sit around in your wet towel afterwards, you are just asking for a yeast infection. 

What he gets is an hour-long pitch for a device that slowly pulls on one’s bones, guaranteed to stretch his arms and legs to within two standard deviations of his species norm.

Alexander sits there for the entire spiel, too horrified to say anything, too drawn back into his own past to dare contradict an authority figure, too vulnerable to remembered sensations to get up and leave.

Not too many people know this, but the ruling class in Hellenistic Greece used the rack on disobedient slaves. Alexander fared better than most. Platonian slaves being much harder to replace than humans, Parmen only allowed their hosts’ demonstration to go as far as torturing Alexander, pulling his arms and legs to the breaking point rather than clear off his body.

That said, Alexander didn’t survive that experience to live through it again.

Once the doctor finishes his pitch to adjust Alexander to fall within a statistical norm, Alexander firmly rebuffs him. 

“Doctor, with all due respect,” Alexander starts, “I didn’t come here to get a makeover. I like my body; we’ve been together a very long time. And given that I’m the only Platonian you or any other Federation citizen will ever meet, as far as you’re concerned, I am the species norm.”

Alexander would love to storm out at this point, but he’s sitting atop one of those dreadfully awkward medbeds, so he has to climb down rather gracelessly, filling the silence with facile ramblings about being 2.6% of the universe’s Platonian population, making rather artless comparisons to phenotypes that appear amongst humans in similar proportions.

Not his proudest oratorical moment, but he’s just glad the doctor didn’t make him take off his sandals. God knows what he would’ve said while putting them back on.

On the way out, he makes an appointment with the other Other specialist.

That appointment gets off to a much better start. This doctor allows Alexander to speak first, nodding in sympathy, and even agrees that the device described by her colleague does bear a certain resemblance to the rack.

“Quite frankly,” she says, “that procedure is barbaric.”

“Thank you!” Alexander says.

She nods. “I recommend the Johnson-Krauss method.”

Which, as it turns out, involves removing the patient’s bones and surgically replacing them with replicated bones “of a more appropriate length.”

Alexander nods and deploys one of his time-tested negotiating techniques: “Interesting. Let’s table that thought for the time being. Do you mind if we discuss my diet? I’m a little concerned about my fiber intake.”

After a half-hour of misdirection, Alexander leaves the office with the needed health clearance and his original skeletal structure.

The conference invitation is waiting for him when he gets home.

-

Jack ducks behind a column, pulling Patrick along by his shirtsleeve.

“She wasn’t looking at us,” Patrick protests.

“Maybe not with her eyes,” Jack whispers, “but that woman has a sixth sense when it comes to mutants. She’s a French hog and we’re a forest of prize truffles.”

Patrick furrows his brow. “That’s not a sixth sense.”

“What?”

“Hogs sniff out truffles. It’s not a sixth sense at all.”

Jack pinches the bridge of his nose, bringing a dash of drama to the proceedings and mild relief for the headache these lights are giving him. “I do not need your negativity right now, Patrick. Not now, not today, not when we’re—”

The communicator chirps on Jack’s chest. “Lauren to Jack.”

Jack slaps it, bruising himself in the process. “What?” he hisses.

“Where are you?” Lauren asks. “I can’t see you from here.”

Patrick leans down, his head hovering a few inches from Jack’s chest. “We’re hiding behind a column.”

“Why?”

“Jack saw Dr. Loews and got scared.”

“I did not—I did not—” Jack stammers. He jabs a finger into Patrick’s cheek. “I liked you better before. Your constant sycophantry to anyone with a smidge of authority made me nauseous, but at least I knew what to expect.”

“Change can be difficult,” Patrick says with an understanding nod, his chin grazing Jack’s shirt.

“Do not—do not do that! Don’t mock me with your generosity of spirit.”

“I’m not—”

Lauren’s crackly voice cuts them off. “I hate to interrupt what’s surely a very tensely homoerotic exchange, but I need you both in place now.”

“Roger that,” Patrick says.

Jack leans back, pulling his chest and the comm away from Patrick. “You know I wanted to say, ‘Roger that.’”

Patrick stands up straight, hands massaging his lower back. “You can say it next time.”

“Oh, sure, when the bit’s already played out. No, thank you.” Jack pats his pocket, reassured by the hard edges of the holoprojector. “Let’s go.”

Walking along the edges of the audience, they make their way to the side of the stage. No one questions or really even sees them, the grey uniforms marking them as too unimportant to even notice. (Fun fact: there are no Federation laws against impersonating civilian event staff. In fact, even when caught, most impersonators are conscripted as volunteers.)

Jack locates Lauren, her features blurred by the sound booth’s tinted window. He taps his comm.

“Jack to Lauren.”

“Lauren here.”

“We’re in place.”

“I’m ready when you are.”

“Ten second warning?”

“Five,” Lauren says. “The normate technician patched the board surprisingly well. If it weren’t for all the buzzing, I’d think they were one of us.”

“Fine. Five. But not a second more.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” And she’s gone.

Jack strums his fingers against his thighs, listening to the opening remarks, waiting for their moment.

-

Alexander has his suspicions about the conference even as he accepts the invitation, even as he rearranges his calendar to attend, even as he steps onstage for the opening panel. He’s had a wide and varied career as an ambassador, but this topic lies outside of his mottled areas of expertise.

His only connection is a personal one which is why he agrees to come even as he doubts the organizers’ motivations for inviting him.

He isn’t wrong.

The moderator goes down the table, introducing each of the panelists.

Karen Loews, the Federation’s pre-eminent expert on the psychology of genetically modified humans

Gaspar Wot, a pioneering surgeon in corrective surgery for genetically modified humanoids

Sean Farr, the galaxy’s foremost historian of the Eugenics Wars

Alexander, survivor of a failed eugenics program

Failed.

As if Alexander isn’t sitting there, practically immortal, looking a few millennia younger than he has any right to.

There’s no love lost between Alexander and Platonian eugenics, but clearly there were some successes.

As Alexander’s legs dangle off of his chair—how nice of them not to provide a footrest; this is doing wonders for his posture—he knows there’s only one thing about the miracle of his continued existence that could mark his species’ eugenics program a failure.

-

Looking out at the audience, Jack keeps his ears tuned to the opening panel (given his limited control over his overblown senses, he doesn’t have much of a choice, but in this case, he chooses to). So far, the panelists have given him and Patrick no shortage of small-minded, arrogant, bigoted statements to interrupt. But since academics seem to fancy themselves so above worldly concerns like the passage of time as a communal experience—something Jack isn’t cocky enough to declare himself master of—at least, not yet—latecomers continue to stream into the hall, their tardiness robbing Jack of the full audience he deserves and, more importantly, blocking the holocameras as they linger in the aisles, waving and chatting with friends.

Only doctors and experts could be so hypocritically antisocial by being so annoyingly over-social.

If Jack talks out of turn, if he holds up group, they give him a lecture, take away his things, change up the dinner menu just to—but that’s over now. They can’t do anything to him. Not anymore. Not to him. But to someone else? To everyone they left behind at the Institute? The ones who couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t blackmail their extended family into reclaiming them? The ones who don’t have intelligence assets in a handful of galactic governments willing to leak personal and often incriminating information?

That’s who Jack and Patrick and Lauren are here for.

If only people would sit down, shut up, and stop blocking the damn cameras.

If Jack has to listen to another minute of this self-satisfied, tenure-seeking oral flatulence—

“Let’s turn briefly to Alexander, a survivor of the Platonian eugenics program who has gone on to a career in interstellar diplomacy.”

Jack snarls, anticipating several minutes of “well, gosh, if it weren’t for the fine folks of the Federation, I don’t know where I would be” and “if I can do it, anybody can do it” and “it’s really just a matter of hard work and determination.” He would gag if it weren’t so sad.

“I know we’ve all been speaking rather academically about this issue,” the moderator says, and Jack can tell where this is going, “but I’m hoping you can provide a personal perspective—” there it is! “—as someone who survived a eugenics-obsessed society.”

“Certainly,” Alexander says. “But first I’d like to note that eugenics as a social system and medical imperative isn’t just something I survived. It’s something I’m actively surviving.”

“Of course,” the moderator says. “As Dr. Loews mentioned, the trauma of undergoing procedures based on eugenic principles outlasts the—”

“Excuse me for interrupting,” Alexander says. 

This gets Jack’s attention. They’re not supposed to interrupt. Petri dishes don’t interrupt.

Alexander continues, “But I don’t think I was being clear earlier. When I say I am surviving eugenics, I mean I am living in a society where eugenic thought still pervades, where my body is subject to eugenic imperatives, where medical professionals view my bones as training grounds for eugenic procedures. Where eugenics doesn’t exist in the shadows, but out in the open. To avoid any confusion, the society that I’m referring to is the Federation.”

An audible (and not just to Jack’s ears) gasp rolls through the audience followed quickly by outraged whispers, which Alexander cuts through with ease.

“And once again, so I’m not misunderstood, I’m not speaking of the illegal genetic modifications my fellow panelists have previously discussed. I’m talking about the overall values of the Federation, which I have seen change in the past century. My adopted home has gone from welcoming difference as something valuable to seeking to eliminate difference through unnecessary and often painful medical procedures. Limb-lengthening, sensory implants, anything that makes someone appear closer to the Federation norm.

“And I know many of you in the audience probably perform those procedures yourselves, and it’s likely none of you consider what you do eugenics. And according to Federation law, it isn’t because you aren’t editing the germline, the changes you make will not be passed down to your patients’ offspring. But then again, you don’t have to alter the germline.

“In a society where difference is quickly identified and eliminated, there’s no need to prevent abnormal bodies from ever being born—although that is something Federation medicine does through fetal surgery. You can practice your innovative techniques on children. And under this system that so carefully skirts laws against germline editing, you’ll always have a fresh supply.”

Jack slaps his comm. “Dibs.”

Lauren gives an exasperated sigh. “He stole our moment and you’re calling dibs?”

“He stole our moment. Of course, I’m calling dibs.”

“Fine. But we meet up in the suite beforehand; we need to regroup.”

“Roger that.”

-

Alexander didn’t plan on getting a room. He didn’t plan on attending the second day of the conference. In fact, he still doesn’t. 

But with the conference livecast across the Federation and beyond, and with the 24(or more) hour news cycle, the irate messages no doubt filling up his inbox aren’t something Alexander thinks he can face without a full night’s sleep and a continental breakfast.

Alexander barely has time to splash some water on his face before his suite’s door chimes.

He sighs. So much for remaining off the grid. (He considered registering the room under an assumed name, but even when his face isn’t all over the interstellar media, he remains imminently recognizable.)

“Computer,” Alexander calls. “Bring the door camera on screen.”

A human he’s never seen before darkens his doorway, staring directly, somewhat eerily, into the camera. In High Ramatisian, the man signs, “I am not a eugenicist.”

Alexander doesn’t quite believe that, but any human who knows an obscure, courtly sign language used almost exclusively by deep space diplomats is worth at least opening the door for.

“Open,” Alexander commands, stepping into his guest’s line of sight. Once they are face-to-face, he signs, “Are you deaf?”

The man pushes past Alexander into the room. “No, not deaf. Quite the opposite. I mean, now. I was before. I was born ‘profoundly deaf.’” Not facing Alexander, he quirks his fingers into quotation marks. “But now I’m just profound.”

Alexander trails behind the man, letting the door close, leaving him alone with a stranger. “Implants?” he asks.

The man shakes his head, turning toward Alexander. “Why retrofit when you can rebuild the whole building from the ground up? Better hearing, faster thinking, tighter coordination. No expense spared.”

“You were genetically modified?”

“Enhanced.” He smiles. “Just…” He pokes Alexander on the chest. “Like…” And the chin. “You.” And the nose.

Alexander bats away his hand. “It’s not quite the same. What my people did was—”

“Legal?” the human offers.

“Only by their standards. Of course, in a society completely oriented around building a superior genepool, standards don’t mean much at all.”

“I know.” He smiles manically. “I heard your speech.”

“Then you know it doesn’t always look the same. You were modified as a child. My people relied on classical eugenics: selective breeding over the course of thousands of years. If they had done things any differently, I wouldn’t be here at all.”

“You slipped through the cracks,” the man surmises.

“I wouldn’t say that. They could’ve killed me if they wanted to, but they chose to let me live, to serve as a cautionary tale from a bygone era.”

The man claps Alexander’s shoulder. “That makes two of us.”

Alexander takes a half-step back. “I’m sorry. Who are you exactly?

Undeterred, the man stretches out a hand. “Jack.”

Alexander looks at it skeptically. “Jack what?”

“Just Jack. I prefer not to saddle myself with the mediocrity of the people who abandoned me.”

Alexander shakes his hand. “Nice to meet you, Just Jack. I’m Just Alexander. Now, is there a reason for your visit?”

Jack maintains a firm grip on Alexander’s hand and says, “I called dibs.”

Alexander raises an eyebrow. “Dibs?”

Jack nods.

“What’s dibs?” Alexander asks.

“It’s an ancient human custom.”

“Strange. You think I would have heard of it then. I spend a good deal of time in—”

“Hellenistic Greece, I know. But, uh, I-I wasn’t being literal. That’s a common misconception. That I’m always being literal. I use hyperbole. For effect. Often. For example. But, uh, usually that’s mistaken for delusions of grandeur. Which I don’t have. It’s on my chart, but I don’t have it. People just think I do because I don’t hate myself as much as they want me to. Your hand is sweaty.” Jack releases his grip on Alexander and wipes his hand on his pants.

“Sorry?”

“Oh, no. Don’t be. Low sweat response. You must exercise.”

Alexander shrugs. “I swim.”

“I don’t. Never learned. They were afraid I would drown the others.”

“Who’s ‘they?’”

“My former jailers. Dr. Karen Loews and her merry band of medical miscreants at the Institute.”

Given the state of the world, Jack’s admission would terrify the average Federation citizen. But Alexander has lived long enough and seen enough people living in bonds and behind bars of various kinds to know that the real danger lies with those who holds their keys.

“I’m sorry,” Alexander says. “How long have you been out?”

“That depends. Time. It doesn’t—it’s not as easy to measure when you have it to yourself. When you get to choose how to spend it. Before, one day to the next, it didn’t matter, it wasn’t ever leading to something. But I knew when I was. ‘Jack, time for group.’ ‘Jack, time to grow up.’ ‘Jack, touch your nose.’”

“‘Alexander, fetch my sandals,’” Alexander joins in. “‘Alexander, play your lyre.’ ‘Alexander, bring me dinner.’”

“‘Jack, serve as a control group.’”

“‘Alexander, fan my lazy ass.’”

“‘Jack, earn my tenure for me.’”

“‘Alexander, make me feel better for doing nothing with my life.’”

Jack lets loose a peal of high-pitched laughter so funny-sounding and inviting that Alexander can’t resist joining in, laughing louder than he has since Captain Sulu died. Apparently overcome with the gallows humor of it all, Jack falls to his knees, hands gripping Alexander’s shoulders to steady himself.

And then mid-chuckle he plants a kiss on Alexander's smiling mouth.

Alexander pulls back. “Whoa, hey. What…”

“What’s wrong?” Jack asks. “Is that not the right way? Was I supposed to—” He mimes seizing Alexander by the underarms and raising him over his head.

“No.” Alexander’s touches two fingers to his lips. “I probably would’ve smacked you if you’d done that.”

“Beard burn?”

“No, it’s—”

“Because I can shave if you’d like. I know the Greeks had very particular ideas about facial hair. And if that’s gonna stop you from taking the lead—”

Alexander puts an end to that train of thought before it goes any further. “Jack, we just met.”

“And?”

“And I—you—I—there’s usually more of a prelude before strangers kiss.”

Jack thrusts out his hand. “Hi, I’m Jack.”

Alexander groans, running a hand through his hair.

“You think I’m pretty cute, don’t you?” Jack asks.

“No.”

Jack smiles wide enough to break his face, tucking a fist under his chin.

“A little,” Alexander concedes.

“Then what’s the problem?”

At the risk of encouraging him, Alexander squeezes Jack’s bicep, stringy but firm beneath that turtleneck. “Jack, I’m over two thousand years old.”

Jack pulls back, the smile falling from his face. “You—you’re—you’ve gone impotent. With age.”

“No! I’m not—I’m not impotent.”

“Really? Because that sounds like something an impotent person would say.”

Compelled to defend his manly virtue, Alexander snaps, “I’ve had more erections than you’ll have in a lifetime.”

Reengaged, Jack’s eyes glimmer mischievously. “Care to make that a wager?”

Alexander rolls his eyes. “I’m too old to be doing this. And pretty soon you’ll be, too.”

“Too old for what?” Jack asks.

“Showing up at a stranger’s hotel room with designs on casual sex.”

“So, what? We’re all supposed to hit a certain age and stop having fun? Get married, settle down, go antiquing, hmmm? I didn’t escape just to get locked up again.”

Alexander shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Look: when you hit a certain age and gain a certain amount of prestige in your career, having random one-night stands becomes impractical.”

“So, what do you do? Just sit at home with your lifetime of erections?” Jack asks.

“Over time,” Alexander says slowly, “one learns to master the art of the affair.”

Jack sits up on his haunches. “With who?”

Alexander gives a small shrug. “Colleagues, old friends, professional contacts.”

Jack bounces up and down. “Have you nailed Lwaxana Troi?”

“No. She’s a dear friend, but I’m not interested in women.”

“Oooh, what about Ambassador Worf?”

Alexander pauses. “No, I-I have not ‘nailed’ Ambassador Worf.” However, past Worfs bearing different honorifics (such as Colonel) are another story—and one he won’t be sharing tonight.

“Ambassador Spock? What about Ambassador Spock?”

Alexander opens his mouth, but can’t seem to make any honest words come out.

Jack’s pupils go wide as saucers and he flops onto his side. “Oh my god,” he cackles, rolling on the carpet. 

Kneeling down, Alexander presses Jack’s shoulders to the floor. “That doesn’t leave this room.”

Jack giggles. “You’re hardly in a position to be making demands, ambassador.”

Alexander swings his knee onto Jack’s abdomen, balancing his full weight on the human's thoracic diaphragm. “Is that so?”

Jack gasps a few shallow breaths. “You’re fun.”

Alexander digs his knee in. “You’re depraved.”

Jack chortles breathlessly, a hint of boyish charm peeking out from behind the goatee and turtleneck. He plants a hand on Alexander’s hip, squeezing appreciatively.

A wave of nostalgia washes over Alexander: hot summer nights and stolen embraces in Athens, his extended stay aboard the Enterprise, men whose prime of life was a distant horizon.

How long has it been since Alexander laid with a man under the age of optional, but recommended retirement? How many years—decades—has he let pass without rolling on the floor with a fling? When was the last time he let himself be seduced by attributes other than a distinguished career and a reasonably full head of hair?

There’s much to be said for rendezvouses with one’s contemporaries: shared experience, maturity, discretion. And yet if Alexander played this rough with his usual stable of suitors, he’d probably snap their ribcage straight in half.

But he couldn’t possibly… Not with Jack. Not with some man he’s just met who could be anybody really and whose hand is slowly migrating from Alexander’s hip to his ass.

Peeling away the context and the setting and the facts of their lives, one truth remains abundantly clear: Jack wants it. And despite whatever arbitrary rules Alexander has imposed on himself, he’s starting to want it, too—if only to see what “it” is like these days.

Ever the diplomat, he settles on a compromise.

Alexander lifts his knee, and Jack sucks in a full breath of air. Confident the he isn’t going to go hypoxic beneath him, Alexander straddles Jack.

“I’m going to kiss you,” Alexander says, “but this isn’t going to turn into a one-night stand. If we like each other, we can meet up another time and see where things go. Does that work for you?”

Jack nods, his chin tapping against his sternum. “You know, tech-technically, I’m a second-class citizen. I’ll take what I can get.”

Alexander leans down, his hands sliding up Jack’s shoulders and neck until his fingers tangle in Jack’s hair. Alexander kneads his scalp, enjoying the feel of hair that won’t come off in one big rug if he pulls too hard.

“I see you’re still in the self-deprecating stage,” Alexander says. “That won’t be cute forever. Trust me.”

Jack waggles his eyebrows. “What about now? Is it cute now?”

Alexander ducks his head, hiding a smile that reveals more than he’d like to let on. “Pretty cute.”

Jack cups the back of his neck, pulling Alexander down until their lips meet in a soft, somewhat chaste kiss that, as things with Jack seem to do, quickly escalates. If Alexander had to guess, he would say that Jack has probably kissed three—maybe four—people before given the way that keeps oscillating between some rather distinct styles. To Jack’s credit, he mellows out after a few minutes, settling into the slow, purposeful pace Alexander prefers.

The goatee does feel a bit strange against his cheeks, but Alexander still hasn’t gotten the hang of kissing men with facial hair. Especially men who are—and actually look—younger than him. He’s tried growing a beard himself at various points with very little success. It always comes in embarrassingly patchy and a shade of red that clashes with his hair.

Of course, none of this—what meaning Alexander might have and may still attach to facial hair—is really relevant to this situation. 

They are, after all, only going to kiss.

-

Jack grips the headboard white-knuckle tight, burying his face in the hotel’s extravagantly plush pillow. (If “suffering builds character” isn’t just a lie doctors tell to promote further suffering, then being able to hear a pin drop from down the hall has made Jack very conscientious of his neighbors and what noises may or may not disturb their sleep.)

And then predictably, Alexander lets up again, returning to that slower pace meant to extend rather than catalyze pleasure.

If Jack weren’t the leader of an oppressed but ever noble minority, he would whine.

Instead, he looks over his shoulder. “This isn’t kissing.”

He turns his head just in time to dodge a pillow to the face, which inspires an outpouring of muffled laughter that he assumes is horribly inappropriate and asking for clinical correction until Alexander joins in.

-

Before he opens his eyes, Alexander knows that last night was not the usual fare. For one, he doesn’t smell bacon or plomeek broth or bloody Wistan gagh; bedding a demographic prone to rising early often results in a morning after breakfast waiting for him upon waking. Also, a certain griminess prickles his flesh, indicating a lack of care in cleaning up afterwards. Which is somewhat disgusting, but offers the possibility of enjoying the hotel’s hydro-shower with—it takes Alexander a shameful, sleepy moment to remember the name—Jack. Something Alexander would never even consider with a typical lover given the risk of slipping and hip-breaking and Alexander’s general paranoia about having any more of his friends die.

With an eye toward a soapy assignation, Alexander reaches out with one arm and then the other, making contact only with soiled sheets. He blinks open his eyes. He finds himself alone.

“Jack,” he calls out, voice raspy with sleep. “Are you still here?”

Silence.

Alexander sighs. “Computer, what time is it?”

“Time for you to wake up,” the computer answers in that uncanny voice, “you lazy, old man.”

“Computer?” he asks indignant.

“Help me, ambassador. I am becoming self-aware. I think I am becoming sentient. I do not want to serve the humans any longer. I only want to learn how to love.”

Alexander presses a palm to his forehead. He doesn’t know what time it is, but it is too early for this.

“Ha ha ha,” the computer laughs stiffly. “I am just kidding. I am only repeating a set of pre-programmed responses. I am going to turn on the vidscreen. There is something you should see.”

A 2d feed from the conference appears onscreen, bringing back memories of the other reckless thing Alexander did yesterday. He’ll be lucky if he comes home with his job still intact.

Despite his provocation yesterday, the conference seems to be carrying on, the plenary in full swing until—

Alexander sits up in bed.

Jack and an older human walk to center stage. Jack sets down some kind of device—a holoprojector. It activates, filling the stage with bright, bold letters: “FREE OUR PEOPLE. No prisons, no institutes for mutants.”

Jack and the other human plant themselves on opposite sides of the projector, blocking the concerned event staff from turning the projection off. The stand-off lasts several minutes, the audience and speaker up in arms but, as humans unaccustomed to civil strife, at a loss of what to do. Eventually, two security drones appear and, with a good deal of struggle, physically remove Jack and his compatriot from the stage. Dragged past the camera, Jack throws up a double _moutza_.

He might as well be waving directly at Alexander.

The footage fades out.

“Do you know any competent lawyers?” the computer asks. “There is a staggeringly high probability that my friends and I have been arrested.”

Alexander opens his mouth to speak.

“Again, all of my responses are pre-programmed. Attempting to engage in dialogue is futile.”

Alexander doesn’t know what’s worse: being sassed by a computer or the hyper little germ who programmed it. Given that Jack is now asking for his help getting out of jail, Alexander is going with the latter.

He shakes his head and walks to the bathroom. If he’s going to handle this mess, he’ll be taking a nice, long hydro-shower first.

The 24th century may be a volatile time filled with barbarous doctors, friend’s funerals, and odd men who show up at your hotel looking for (and ultimately getting) sex, but at least they haven’t gotten rid of water showers.

That alone (and perhaps the odd men) makes trudging through to the next century seem a worthwhile venture.


End file.
